


You Made My Life an Adventure

by Linsky



Category: Hockey RPF, The Road to El Dorado (2000)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Road to El Dorado, Angst, Confusion, Denial, First Time, M/M, Pining, So much denial, The Atlantic Ocean should be wider than this, What is gay?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-03 01:16:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4080934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linsky/pseuds/Linsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jonny looks at the kid before him, who’s pathetically short even for twelve, and who, first thing after meeting Jonny, shoved him and accused him of stealing. And then jumped off a wall. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “Partners.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I recently saw The Road to El Dorado for the first time and may have scared the people I was watching with by shouting “THEY’RE SO GAY OMG HOW DO THEY NOT REALIZE IT.” And then I had to write this story.
> 
> The second half of the full story follows the general plot of the movie fairly closely, but I’ve taken liberties with the dialogue and the finer details. There are still lines that are quoted directly from the movie, though, and I did not write those.
> 
> See the end note of the last chapter for spoiler-y warnings. See the movie to know which lines are not mine. (See the movie anyway—though you don’t have to, to read this story.)
> 
> No attempt has been made to be faithful to history. Hey, I followed the movie’s lead.

It all starts when Patrick gets the map.

Well, no. It all starts years before that, when Jonny gets practically accosted (or, as Patrick characterizes it later, saved) by this scrawny little twelve-year-old with ridiculous blond curls in the Sevilla marketplace. Granted, Jonny’s only thirteen, but there’s a big difference between twelve and thirteen. Also, this kid is really tiny. Laughably tiny.

Jonny’s been in the city for a few months at this point. It’s summertime, and that’s easier than winter, but it’s still harder for Jonny to find food than the older boys said it would be, when Jonny left his family farm in Esquivel. (Not that he had much choice about that.)

Anyway, he’s doing okay this morning — a handful of cashews and a couple of dates — and all he really wants is something to drink that isn’t the foul water that runs down the streets or the water from the well where the housewives pushed him out of line last week. What he really wants is a coconut.

Coconuts are tough. They can’t be slipped into pockets. Jonny doesn’t try for them, usually. But the coconut vendor is already watching this little blond shrimp of a kid who, yeah, Jonny has to agree there, is probably a theft risk, the way he’s hanging around the edge of the table with his hands in his pockets. So Jonny thinks maybe he can grab a small one while the man’s not watching.

Except: “Hey!” the coconut vendor shouts as soon as Jonny’s lifted it off the table. “Where do you think you’re going with that?”

Jonny panics, tries to run. But when he turns, there’s a member of the guard right there, grinning and holding the hilt of his sword like he was just waiting for Jonny to mess up. Jonny turns in another direction, but all the other ways out are blocked by stalls, and now—now the little blond kid is in his face.

“You think you can take a coconut from me?” the kid demands. He’s got crazy curls and a fierce expression on his little face.

“I—what?” Jonny says, because he didn’t take this coconut from the kid. He took it from the stall, though he’s not going to say that out loud. “I didn’t take this from you.”

“Did so. That’s the one I was gonna buy.” The kid shoves him, and Jonny stumbles back.

“Um…sorry?” Jonny says, for lack of anything else.

“Not good enough.” The kid jumps up onto the ledge that borders the marketplace. Everyone is staring now, including the guard and the coconut vendor, who seem to have lost the plot as thoroughly as Jonny has. “You want it? You come up here and fight me for it.”

Jonny doesn’t really want to, but everyone’s staring, and he’s still holding a stolen coconut. He gets up on the ledge.

A few people cheer, like they really want to see two kids fight over a coconut in a marketplace. “You’ll regret ever insulting me,” this ridiculous, tiny kid says, and Jonny is just thinking that he must be completely off his nut before the kid, very deliberately, with the eye away from their audience, winks at him.

Jonny doesn’t know what to do with that, but the kid launches himself at him and Jonny has to fight for his balance. He gets in a swing or two, not really connecting, as the crowd cheers them on. Then the kid wraps himself around Jonny’s waist and pulls, and the two of them fall off the ledge and down to the street below.

It’s not that far a fall, maybe eight feet, but Jonny’s winded by the impact. “Okay, now run,” the kid says, in a totally different voice than he’d been using, and it takes Jonny a minute to get to his feet and run after him, still holding his coconut.

“Hey!” the guard shouts above them, but they have a good head start, and the guard is either too old or too dignified to make the jump after them.

Jonny runs after the blond kid for a few blocks until the kid ducks into an alley and slumps against the wall. “Wow, that was close,” the kids says.

Jonny slumps next to him. “Thanks,” he says when he’s caught his breath.

The kid grins at him. “Glad you caught on. I’m Patrick.”

“Jonny.” He holds out a hand, and Patrick pumps it up and down a couple of times.

When he lets go, Jonny leans back against the stone and closes his eyes. The alley is cool, and he feels safe for the first time in a couple of days. Relaxed.

“That was pretty good back there,” he hears Patrick say, “but I bet we could do better.”

Jonny opens his eyes. “Huh?”

“See that melon stall in the corner?” Patrick points toward the far end of the alley, where Jonny can just see the start of another marketplace. “I bet we can steal one of those.”

Melons are even harder than coconuts. “Don’t be an idiot.”

Patrick widens his eyes. “Come on, Jonny,” he says. “We can do it.”

His eyes are a startling color of blue. Jonny wonders how often Patrick uses that look to get away with things. Then he looks at Patrick’s hands, which look like they can get away with a lot, too, and the idea starts to seem a little less idiotic. “Fine,” he says slowly. “But we’re doing it my way.”

This time they don’t even get caught. Jonny keeps the merchant busy with serious questions at the front of the stall, flashing the coin Patrick gave him and pretending like his parents sent him to get the best melon there is, and Patrick lifts a melon off the back of the cart, easy as breathing.

They split the melon in an alley. “I told you it would be easy,” Patrick says.

Jonny’s mouth is full of sweet melon juice. He hasn’t tasted this for over a year. “Only because it was my plan.”

“Yeah, exactly.” Patrick grins. “So what are we stealing tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Patrick says. “After all, we’re partners now, right?”

Jonny looks at the kid before him, who’s pathetically short even for twelve, and who, first thing after meeting Jonny, shoved him and accused him of stealing. And then jumped off a wall. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “Partners.”

***

It doesn’t take too long before it’s always Jonny and Patrick.

Patrick has lessons to teach Jonny, he announces. “I bet you can’t even spell ‘lessons,’” Jonny says.

“Not important,” Patrick says. “Spelling is not one of the lessons.”

The first lesson, apparently, is the importance of having a good set of clothing. “If you dress well enough,” Patrick says while they’re swanning down one of the fancier streets in town, “people will let you get away with anything.”

Jonny’s never felt comfortable walking through this part of town, but Patrick does it like he was born to it, the same way he walks through the slums. “What, like furs and stuff?”

Patrick rolled his eyes. “I said well enough. Not crazy.”

They actually buy a set of clothes each, instead of stealing them, so that they can get them tailored to fit. The money was stolen, but still—it feels surprisingly legitimate. When Jonny goes to pay the tailor, he half-expects to be called out, not for having stolen the money, but for having the gall to try to shop here in the first place.

He does feel different when he leaves the shop in his new clothes. “See?” Patrick says. “Now you can even do the stupid stuff you like to do, like sitting in the back of the church when there’s no service going on without getting called out by the priest.”

“It’s not stupid,” Jonny mutters. He just likes the quiet of it, that’s all, and the cool heaviness of the stone rising above him. “No stupider than the way you always want to race against the carriage horses by the river.”

“You’re just saying that because you know I'm faster than you,” Patrick says, and then it is on.

The first time Jonny gets a tear in his good set of pants, playing a game of street ball that Patrick is way better at than he should be, he wakes up from a nap later to find Patrick patching them with a needle and thread. He raises his eyebrow, and Patrick blushes.

“It’s an important skill to have,” Patrick mutters, and then won’t say anything about where he learned it. But the pants are good as new when he’s done.

“Come on,” Patrick says when Jonny tries them on, “I’ll come with you to the stupid church.” And he does go, and sits next to Jonny quietly for at least fifteen minutes, even if he falls asleep after that. Jonny doesn’t mind. The warm weight on his shoulder makes the church seem more peaceful, somehow.

***

Patrick’s second lesson is to always have a plan. “I figure you’ll be in charge of planning,” Patrick says.

“You do, do you?” Jonny says, giving him as skeptical a look as he’s capable of. He’s had lots of practice with skeptical looks, since Patrick pushed his way into his life. “And what are you in charge of?”

“The ideas, obviously,” Patrick says.

Jonny would object to that more, except, honestly, he thinks the planning might be safer in his hands.

That’s how Jonny ends up coming up with plans for things he would never in a million years want to do, like hide in the top of the apple trees and tease the day-workers with ghost sounds or climb all over that one cliff by the seaside to see if they can find the cave that’s supposed to hold pirate treasure. Or more often, plans to get out of situations after Patrick gets them into them.

He tries to point out that his clothing, at any rate, would stay nicer if Patrick had less exciting ideas. “But where would be the fun in that, Jonny?” Patrick says, dancing away with his tongue between his teeth.

And Jonny has to admit he has a point. It might not be the life he thought he’d have, back when he was learning his letters and his sums in front of the fire at the farmhouse. But these past months with Patrick, for the first time since he lost his parents, he’s felt like he has a family again.

***

It changes when they’re fifteen.

Jonny’s fifteen, at any rate. Patrick says he’s just turned fifteen—”My birthday is when it starts getting cold out”—but he’s still so much shorter that Jonny finds it hard to believe him.

His size doesn’t stop him from flirting, though. Right now they’re in the marketplace, and Patrick is flirting with a girl who’s selling painted bracelets. They started this particular routine last year: Patrick flirts with a woman at a stall, and Jonny sneaks around the back and swipes some of her wares while she’s distracted. It should be the other way around, Patrick says, because Jonny is handsomer—that’s just obvious, so Jonny doesn’t bother denying it—but when Jonny tries, he ends up stumbling over his words and going all stiff. He’s better at talking to the authorities, convincing them that yes, these two teenage boys are supposed to be living in this building; yes, their parents are returning any minute; and no, they don’t need any help. He’s better at serious. Patrick is better at bright eyes and easy smiles.

He’s turning them on now for the girl at the stall. She’s not the kind of vendor they’d usually go for: her wares aren’t valuable enough, and she doesn’t look like she has all that much to spare. But Patrick singled her out as soon as they stepped into the marketplace. Jonny watches him put on a smirk and say something in a low voice that Jonny can’t quite hear. The girl giggles and flushes a little and Jonny is suddenly furious.

They don’t need this girl’s wares, really, and she hasn't done anything wrong. But he reaches for the row of bracelets and grabs at least two dozen.

Patrick’s late coming to their meeting spot. When he gets there, he sees the two dozen bracelets and frowns. “You didn’t need to take that many. Mari’s going to miss them.”

Jonny scowls harder. Stealing is the whole point. “Mari, huh?”

Patrick gives him a strange look and picks up half of the bracelets Jonny took. “I’m going to take these back to her. She can’t spare this much.”

Jonny knows that, and he wants to ask why Patrick picked her in the first place, then. But he just frowns as Patrick goes away with half the bracelets.

Jonny doesn't hear anything more about Mari. A couple of weeks later, though, they go out to the countryside to a local fair—“Pumpkins as tall as a man, Jonny, we have to see that!”—and they end up at an outdoor ale tent. Patrick’s dragged him over half the fair already, and Jonny is tired but happy to be here, sitting in the autumn sunshine with nothing to worry about but when Patrick’s getting back with more ale. Jonny spots him up at the tent, telltale outline of his shoulders held just a little too high. He’s grown lately. Jonny can see it in the gangliness of his arms and legs, the way they’re a little too long for his body. He’s going to need a new set of clothes soon. Jonny watches as Patrick leans forward, puts on a dimpled smile.

A smile for the girl he's talking to.

Jonny sits up straight. The girl is older than Patrick—practically everyone here is, except the kids running in the mud at the edge of the field—but she’s obviously interested. The mounds of her breasts press above the low top of her ruffled shirt, and Jonny would ordinarily find that attractive except that Patrick is looking at them, too. He laughs and says something to the girl, and then he tugs her forward and takes her mouth in a kiss.

The rest of the world whites out for a minute. Jonny grips the edge of the wooden table in front of him and hears his own breathing harsh in his ears and he sees the kiss go on and on and—

“Are you okay, man?”

Patrick’s back, with a pint of ale in each hand. The kiss is evidently not going on anymore.

Jonny makes himself relax his grip on the table. His fingers hurt from how hard he was holding it. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m just…yeah.”

Patrick looks at him more closely. Jonny looks back, trying to figure out if his mouth looks different. It might be swollen, a little. Maybe she ran her tongue over his lip, there…maybe her teeth…

“Are you sure?” Patrick asks. He puts the pints down on the table. “Because we can go if you want.”

“Yeah,” Jonny says. “Yeah, let’s go.”


	2. Chapter 2

They leave the fair and hop a wagon going back to the city, jumping up onto the bales of hay after it’s already moving. Patrick somersaults on the landing and ends up upside down and laughing. He meets Jonny’s eye, a piece of hay stuck to his cheek, and Jonny feels a dark knot of tension dissolve. He pulls the piece of hay off Patrick’s cheek, ignoring the flare of surprise in Patrick’s eyes when his hand comes close, and rubs a whole handful of it in Patrick’s hair.

Patrick shoves the next handful in Jonny’s face, and in the resulting hay fight it’s a miracle they don’t get caught and kicked off the cart. When the fight is over, Jonny pulls Patrick close and keeps an arm around him all the way back, and Patrick leans into his shoulder.

They jump off when the cart reaches the outskirts of the city. It’s dusk now, and they’re both sleepy, and when it’s dark like this, the city is theirs. Patrick stays close and they walk slowly in twilit silence.

Jonny sometimes imagines, at times like this, that they can talk to each other without speaking: that they have a language without words that says the only important things that need to be said. He doesn’t know what they are, but he can feel Patrick saying them.

Tonight, it’s like that, but there’s an edge of something else beneath it that he can’t quite identify. It feels scary, and he doesn’t want to poke at it. He wonders if Patrick can feel it, too. Jonny looks at him as they walk along, still close together, and Patrick looks back: just a glance, a quirk of the lips, before his eyes slide away again, easy.

They’ve been living on a rooftop on the north side of town. It’s moving on toward the season when they’ll need to find something indoors for the winter, but for now the nights are still warm enough for the open air. They make their way there, their steps quiet on the latticework that leads to the roof. There’s a way up from the inside, but no one in the building uses it, and the people who live on the top floor are almost never there. Sometimes Jonny and Patrick sneak down into their rooms when it’s raining too hard and Patrick starts complaining.

They don’t always go to bed as soon as it’s dark, but tonight Patrick goes straight over to their bedroll and lifts up the side. He gives Jonny an inquiring glance when Jonny doesn’t follow right away like he usually does. Jonny takes off his shoes and socks and climbs into the cool fabric.

They’ve always slept like this. It makes sense, when they don’t have much in the way of blankets or even usually a fire. The only times Jonny can remember sleeping apart since he met Patrick are the hot summer nights when both of them lie sweating on top of the bedroll and can’t bear the tiniest bit of added heat. But tonight is cool, and Patrick curls up in Jonny’s arms and presses his nose to Jonny’s collarbone.

He’s such a familiar warmth down the length of Jonny’s body. Jonny can’t relax, though. He keeps picturing the way Patrick kissed the girl at the fair: their lips sliding together, his hand in her hair. It’s not—he shouldn’t be thinking about that.

“Patrick,” he whispers after a few minutes have passed.

“Hm?” Patrick shifts his head up and inch or two, eyes already soft with drowsiness and curls matted to his forehead.

Jonny doesn’t have anywhere to go from here. He doesn’t know why he said Patrick’s name in the first place, except that he wanted to distract himself from his thoughts. But now it’s worse, because he’s noticing the way Patrick’s lips part a little when he breathes.

He exhales, close enough that Patrick can probably feel the gust of air. “I just…”

Patrick soothes a hand up Jonny’s back. Jonny can feel the press of fingers through the thin fabric of his shirt. “Yeah?”

The word has almost no sound at all. Jonny realizes he’s staring at Patrick’s mouth.

Patrick puts his tongue out, wets his lower lip, and Jonny’s stomach jerks. It’s a feeling he’s had before and has always pushed down almost before he can register it. But now—

“Jonny?” Patrick whispers, lips moving around the word, and Jonny has the feeling again, stronger.

“You know…you’re the most important person in my life, right?” Jonny says.

Patrick laughs, softly, and yeah, Jonny knew he knew that, but it seemed very important that he tell him. Patrick’s arms tighten around him, and the feeling in Jonny’s gut spills over into other parts of him. “Of course I know. Who else would it be?”

Patrick’s face when he’s happy like this is breathtaking. Jonny has the sudden urge to keep that expression on his face all the time. He wants to make Patrick feel as good as Jonny does, when they’re lying like this. He wants—he wants to nose into Patrick’s dimple.

He does.

He hears Patrick’s quick intake of air, feels the dimple relax around the tip of his nose as Patrick’s face goes slack with surprise. He slides his nose down Patrick’s jaw and hears the new hitch in his breath.

“Jonny,” Patrick breathes, a slight exhale against Jonny’s cheek. Jonny lets out a little pained sound without meaning to. There’s a skittering under his skin, and the heat in his gut has spread to his fingers and toes and lips. He slides his nose upwards until it bumps into Patrick’s and their mouths meet.

Patrick’s mouth is soft and cool and warm at the same time. It feels—like Jonny imagined it would, when he watched Patrick kissing the girl at the fair, only a hundred times better. A thousand times better. Their mouths are open, Patrick’s lips plush and full against his own, and their tongues come together wetly.

Jonny can’t help the groan that comes out of him. Is he supposed to feel it in his toes, like this? Like his entire stomach has gone molten and bubbly just from Patrick’s tongue in his mouth?

Patrick tilts his head to move them closer together. Their tongues slide slickly, and Jonny can’t get enough air. “Pat,” he says, breaks away long enough to say, because it feels important. He wants to say it a million times. He wants to paint it in big letters across the sky. “Patrick.”

Patrick seizes Jonny’s head in his hands and licks back in eagerly. It’s so much more than Jonny saw him doing with the girl at the fair, and he feels a flare of triumph that quickly gets buried in what Patrick is doing with his lips and tongue. He didn’t know this was what people felt, when they did this. He doesn’t understand how they don’t do it all the time.

Jonny shifts them so that Patrick is fully on top of him, because he feels like he needs to touch all of him at once. There’s something firm digging into Jonny’s leg that he realizes is Patrick’s erection. He shifts, so that their erections bump together, and they both moan.

Patrick pushes back a few inches and looks down. His eyes are wild, his face flushed, his lips red and slick. He rolls his hips down against Jonny’s.

It’s the best thing Jonny’s ever felt. The solid pressure of Pat’s dick sliding against his, even though layers of clothing, drowns him in pleasure. Sparks of it cover his skin. He’s touched himself before, in stolen moments, and it was good, but not like this. This is _Patrick_ moving against him. It's making him crazy.

He runs his hands down Patrick’s back to the roundness of his ass. He closes his hands around the two globes, and Patrick makes a high, helpless sound in his throat and rocks down harder and comes, shaking in Jonny’s arms. Jonny tries to soothe him through it, but he can’t stop rutting up against Patrick, hot and desperate and urgent. Patrick makes a little whimpering sound, and Jonny breaks. He arches up against Patrick and seizes as the pleasure rolls over him in waves.

He comes back to himself gasping, with Patrick stroking his hair and whispering, “Sh, sh,” into his ear. Jonny buries his face in Patrick’s neck and lets the languid heat of their coupling drag them into sleep.

***

The next morning, Jonny wakes up to see Patrick grinning at him from a few inches away. For a moment Jonny thinks he can’t touch, but then he remembers last night and leans forward to kiss those curving lips. They lick into each other for a few minutes, until Jonny shifts and feels the dried come in his pants. He makes a face, and Patrick laughs at him.

“This is gross,” he says. “Let’s go wash.”

They go to the river north of the town like they usually do. Only usually, Jonny doesn’t have so much trouble not staring when Patrick takes off his shirt. Usually, Patrick’s skin in the light of the sun through water doesn’t make Jonny want to push him against the riverbank and get them dirty all over again.

He doesn’t do any of that.

Jonny’s not fooling himself: he knows it wasn’t right, what they did. He went to church, when he was younger, and he knows what they’d say about it there. He knows he’s not the right person to make Patrick smile and kiss the river water off his lips, and if Patrick knew how strongly he felt about last night, that would probably be the last Jonny would ever see of him.

He’s horribly afraid it won’t happen again.

But that night when they go to bed, Patrick presses his mouth to Jonny’s as soon as they lie down. Jonny’s relief is almost as strong as his arousal. This can’t be real—this can’t _last_ —but if he can have it right now, nothing else matters.

This time Patrick pulls Jonny on top. Jonny likes the way it feels to cover Patrick with his body. He likes the way he can roll his hips down and make Patrick whimper and gasp, the way he can bend down and press kisses to Patrick’s neck. Loves the way Patrick arches when he comes and chokes out Jonny’s name.

***

Jonny’s afraid it might change other things, too, but it doesn’t. Patrick still whines that he’s bored and tugs on Jonny’s sleeve to get him to sneak into the monastery to see if they really melt down gemstones to make the colored inks for decorating scriptures. He still holds onto Jonny’s wrist when they run away from the guard who catches them, even though Patrick really is faster and could leave Jonny in the dust. He still flirts with the girls in the market.

Jonny tries not to mind the last part. He doesn’t, when it’s the end of the day and he gets Patrick in his arms.

A week later, Patrick puts his hand inside Jonny’s pants for the first time, and Jonny almost comes on the spot. He does come a few strokes later, and then he gets to put his hand inside Patrick’s pants and slide it along skin hot with blood until Patrick shakes apart next to him. He takes in the way Patrick’s face tightens and his mouth falls open every time he comes, and he holds those memories in case the day comes when he doesn’t get to see it again.

Winter comes, and they find warmer places to hole up for the night. Patrick curls himself into Jonny and bites at him through layers of clothing when Jonny jerks him off. And then there are the nights when they can’t find anyplace warm, and they sleep in every piece of clothing they have, and Jonny wraps himself around Patrick and breathes warm air on his fingers and kisses his chapped lips and melts his frozen eyelashes in the mornings. He strokes Patrick’s dick through his pants until they’re both warm.

***

Things get easier as they get older and can get proper jobs. Not that they do, all that often, but sometimes Jonny will work a week of construction or Patrick will pack boxes for a while in between pickpocketing and conning, and they rent real rooms more often than not. It’s not like they need a lot: a roof over their heads, all the food they can eat, and the open sky whenever they want it.

And Patrick in Jonny’s arms every night. Jonny still needs that, even if he’s trying not to.

They don’t stay in Sevilla. They could, if they wanted to lie low in a room somewhere, but Patrick wants adventure, and Jonny wants anything Patrick wants. So they work their way along the coast, to Malaga and Almeria and Alicante, moving on whenever one town starts feeling too small for them. They’re getting good at their cons now, but they still have close calls. Jonny thinks that if they didn’t, Patrick would get bored, and a bored Patrick is bad news for everybody.

Like the day Patrick comes home with the lute.

They’re in Barcelona at the time. They’ve rented a room, not in the nicest part of town, but not in the worst part either, and it has a little balcony that Jonny likes to sun himself on. That’s what he’s doing when Patrick comes home with his treasure.

“I found it in an alley by that bar with the donkey head, the one where the guards believed we were Portuguese,” he says. His eyes are all bright like they got the time Jonny kissed him by surprise on a castle parapet outside Grenada, and he can’t stop looking at the instrument. “They were just throwing it out; can you believe it?”

The body of the lute is more scratches than wood, and the neck is hanging by a splinter. Patrick’s looking at it like it’s solid gold.

“You know, I think I can believe it,” Jonny says. “Can you play it?”

Patrick gives him a hurt look. “Can I play it. Can I _play_ it. Come on, Jonny, have you ever known anything these babies can’t do?”

He waggles his fingers at Jonny, and Jonny has to admit he’s right. He’s seen those fingers slip cards up a sleeve and ease the very bottom piece of fruit from a ten-foot pyramid and…well. Other things. He shivers a little.

“All right, let’s see.” He crosses his arms.

“Well, not right now,” Patrick says.

“Uh-huh,” Jonny says, and goes back to sunning himself.

Patrick doesn’t get the lute working that night. But he does manage to cover their entire room with the gluey substance he bartered for with some jewelry Jonny happens to know he was saving for something special, and he breaks at least five strings. When Jonny goes to bed, Patrick is still muttering over it, hair sticking up in odd places from the adhesive and broken bits of wood scattered on the floor around him.

He’s gone the next morning when Jonny wakes up. Jonny goes for a stroll along the docks, picks up his breakfast off the back of a few poorly watched merchant stalls, and then spends a while selling off some textiles they acquired when Patrick fixed a smoky chimney for a merchant back in Alicante. They hardly even smell like smoke anymore. Sometimes Patrick gets like this: on a tear, unable to focus on anything but his current obsession. Jonny’s learned to go with it.

Patrick’s still gone when he goes to bed that night. It feels strange to fall asleep in an empty room. Tomorrow, Jonny thinks. If Patrick’s not back then, he’ll go looking for him.

He wakes up a while later to the sound of music.

Jonny opens his eyes to see Patrick sitting by the bed and strumming the lute. He’s singing along, soft tenor voice lilting a melody Jonny’s never heard before. Jonny’s still half-asleep, and he lets the music wash over him, watching Patrick’s fingers work over the strings, Patrick’s mouth forming the words.

Patrick strums the last chord and smiles. The silence in the room is the sweetest kind, made of the curve of Patrick’s lips and the warmth in Jonny’s gut.

“I made a new neck,” Patrick says into the silence. “See?”

He tilts the lute toward Jonny, and Jonny can see the handsome carved piece that’s fitted into the body of the lute as if it were meant to be there. Patrick takes Jonny’s fingers and lifts them to the join, touches them to wood so smooth he almost can’t tell it was once two pieces. Jonny likes the feeling of Patrick’s fingers on his even more than the workmanship he’s supposed to be touching.

“I didn’t know you could play,” Jonny says, voice sleep-slurred.

“I used to,” Patrick says, ducking his eyes down like he does when it’s something from his past he doesn’t want to talk about. “I can play you another.”

Jonny wants to see Patrick’s fingers moving over the strings again. He lets his hand fall to Patrick’s knee. “One more,” he says. “Then come to bed.”

Patrick smiles and plays another, and Jonny falls asleep before it’s done, lost in the tangle of strings and the soft sound of Patrick’s voice, hand still on Patrick’s knee.

***

It’s also in Barcelona that Jonny loses Patrick in the marketplace.

That’s not really unusual. He’s always losing track of Patrick in crowds. What’s unusual is when Patrick doesn’t come to their rendez-vous point after at least an hour. Jonny finally goes looking for him, trying not to look wild-eyed with panic as he searches the rows of stalls.

There are so many things that could have happened to him. What if he got captured by guards? That probably wouldn’t happen; Patrick’s too careful; but if it did, Jonny wouldn’t have been there to help him out of it. Jonny’s always there to help him out of it. It’s their routine—they need each other—if Patrick got caught for real this time, and he was taken away, and Jonny can’t find him—

Jonny sees him.

He stops and tries to calm his frantic heart beat. Patrick’s a few stalls down, in front of a fancy pavilion with a fabric roof and walls. Jonny can see the telltale blond curl of his hair, too long like always, over the red tunic that’s been Patrick’s favorite for months. He can see the woman Patrick’s talking to.

Jonny’s been trying so hard, these past few years, not to be jealous. He doesn’t have any right to be. If Patrick meets someone and wants to be with her, he should be free to do that. Just because Jonny wants—well. That’s beside the point. But even while he tells himself this, he’s always been able to reassure himself that Patrick doesn’t want any of the women he flirts with, that nothing will happen.

He’s having trouble believing that now.

It’s partly the way they’re standing. Patrick’s leaning back, yeah, but in a way that cants his hips forward, and there’s nothing closed off or evasive about his body language. And then there’s the way he strokes his hand up the woman’s arm, and the way she leans into him and gives him a smile that Jonny doesn’t have any trouble interpreting.

It’s probably just a flirtation. Any minute now, Patrick will wink and leave, pocketing whatever he stole from the woman while she was distracted—

She takes Patrick’s hand, and they go into the tent.

Jonny can’t move. There are people going by him on all sides, hurrying and jostling and yelling at him to move, but he can’t. This is—like the time at the fair, so many years ago, but so much worse, because he knows so much more now. He feels like his chest is closing in on itself.

He’s tried so hard to expect this. So hard not to hold onto what he can’t keep. And yet he can’t move.

“Hey!” Someone’s right next to him, yelling in his ear, and he finally stumbles away. He can’t see where he’s going, though, and he walks into a table of something that rattles. He puts his hands out to steady it, or maybe himself, but that just makes it all rattle more.

“Hey, get out of here,” someone else says, right next to him, and Jonny turns and runs.


	3. Chapter 3

Jonny goes back to the room, and by the time he does, he’s sick with the memory of it. That horrible women with her horrible lush curvy body. It was her fault, really. What was she thinking, seducing Patrick in a marketplace? Weren’t there other men she could seduce? Men who weren’t—needed, the way Patrick is, even if the way Jonny needs him is twisted and sick and only going to break him in the end. But Patrick should know that. Patrick isn’t supposed to break him. He’s supposed to—

Jonny deserves to be broken.

He sags against the wall of their little room with its sunny balcony. He deserves to be broken just for thinking like this. It’s nobody’s fault except Jonny’s, for wanting something he has no right to. This is his punishment, this feeling. This—this thing where he doesn’t know how he’ll make it through the night or what he’ll do tomorrow or how he’ll make his lungs keep drawing air—this is just what happens.

He can’t say anything to Patrick. He can’t let him see.

The key turns in the lock.

Jonny’s body goes rigid. His stomach churns and his fingers tingle and he watches the door open and wants to—

Patrick’s in the doorway, smiling hopefully at him. “Sorry I’m late.”

Jonny chokes on a breath. He wants to do things he would never forgive himself for. “Fuck yeah, you should be sorry.”

Patrick’s smile drops a little. “Well, yeah, I am. I just said. I needed to—”

This isn’t what Jonny should be saying, but his hands are shaking. “You can’t just. You can’t just—say things if you’re not going to follow through on them. You can’t make people think—” God, he’s losing it. He needs to stop. This wasn’t his plan.

“Hey.” Patrick steps farther inside. “Were you worried? I’m sorry. I just had to get a thing.”

“A thing.” Jonny crosses his arms to stop his hands from shaking. “Right. What thing would that be?”

“Well, um.” Patrick runs his hand through his curls, and Jonny used to do that. “This, actually.”

He holds out a little urn, the kind they use to sell fancy oils and unguents. Jonny wasn’t expecting there to be a real thing Patrick bought, and it throws him for a minute, before he remembers what’s going on here. “Okay, so you got a thing. That’s not the point.”

“Actually.” Patrick ducks his head a little. “It’s not just a thing. I mean…it’s just that I thought…”

Here it comes. Jonny’s not going to be able to hold it together. “What did you _think?”_

Patrick looks up. “Sorry if you don’t—I mean, it was just an idea. I didn’t want to, you know, presume. It’s just that I asked, and this is supposed to be the best thing, so if you did want—I mean…”

If Patrick doesn’t get out of here soon, Jonny is going to die. “Just spit it out.”

Patrick’s cheeks go pink a little, and his lashes fall down to his cheeks. Jonny hates him for looking so good. He raises his eyes to Jonny’s again like it costs him something. “I thought maybe,” he takes a step forward, voice softer, “if you want, maybe…I could be inside you?”

Jonny stares at him. For a moment he can’t even understand what he just heard. Then his anger turns to numbness—freezes—falls to pieces on the floor. Jonny thinks maybe he himself falls to pieces on the floor.

“Patrick,” he says, almost no air behind the word. He tries to swallow. His eyes catch on the urn of oil. “That’s…that’s what you were doing in the marketplace?”

“We don’t have to,” Patrick says hurriedly. “It was just an idea, I mean, we can do anything you want. I just thought—”

Jonny grabs Patrick’s arms and squeezes his eyes shut. “Please,” he says.

He opens his eyes in time to see the spreading joy on Patrick’s face.

***

Jonny’s never been so glad they have a room to themselves with a door that locks. Their bed isn’t large, but it’s soft enough, and Patrick spreads him on it face down.

He spends a while stroking Jonny’s back, his sides, up and down his legs. Maybe part of it is that he thinks Jonny’s scared, but part of it feels like—like he just wants to touch. Like he loves touching. Jonny can’t stop shaking.

“Please,” he says again, and Patrick gives a little moan.

“Okay,” he says, voice more ragged than Jonny would have expected, and strokes a finger between the globes of Jonny’s ass.

Jonny gasps. It’s—they’ve done this before, Patrick’s finger stroking over the pucker of Jonny’s ass. But this time he knows it’s leading somewhere. He feels more exposed than he ever has, and he has to hide his face in the pillow. He still doesn’t feel hidden at all.

“Let me just,” Patrick says, and the finger goes away and Jonny hears the sound of the urn opening.

This time, when the finger returns, it’s slick and a little bit cold. Patrick massages against the little pucker of muscle—Jonny bites into the pillow—and the tip of his finger goes in.

All of Jonny’s muscles go stiff.

“Shit, sorry,” Patrick says. He takes his fingertip out, too fast. “You know we don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“No, I do,” Jonny says. He desperately does, wants Patrick to be fully his after all the panic of the last hour. Patrick eases his fingertip back in, and Jonny tries to relax the clench of his muscles, but it seems impossible that any more of Patrick’s finger could fit in there. He’s afraid Patrick will stop, will go away—

Patrick’s other hand comes up to rub slow, soothing circles on his upper back. “Hey, do you remember the time I pretended to be a woman to sneak into the cooking house in Cadiz?” he asks, smile in his voice. “And the guards found out because one of the oranges fell out of my top?”

Jonny can’t help the tiny grin that appears on his face, despite his shakiness “Yeah,” he says. “And they strung you up by your undergarments.”

“I bet my face was so red when you got me down,” Patrick says.

“That’s not all that was red,” Jonny says with a snort, and Patrick’s finger slips all the way inside. Jonny gasps. “Patrick—”

“Sh, you’re doing so good,” Patrick says. His hand is on Jonny’s lower back now. “What about the time we built those stilts to watch the horse races?”

“I—yeah.” Jonny can feel Patrick’s finger moving inside of him. It’s such a strange feeling, the inside bit, and he doesn’t quite know where to put it. “And then…then you stepped on…”

“Dona Maria’s foot, that’s right,” Patrick says. He slides his finger in a little deeper, crooks it down.

Something zings through Jonny. “Patrick!”

“Sorry.” Patrick’s finger pulls back right away. “I can—”

“No. No.” Jonny’s going after the sensation, lifting his ass shamelessly. “Do that again. Just like that.”

“What, this?” Patrick asks, but there’s a grin in his voice now. He works his finger back in and presses on the same spot.

“Oh God.” Jonny wants to arch, twist, just— _get at_ that sensation that’s like a hand on his dick but more diffuse, more…golden. He wants more of it. “Yes, that. Please.”

“Hm.” Patrick pulls his finger out, and Jonny whines, but then there are two fingers going in. The feeling of fullness increases, until Patrick scrapes across that spot again, and it’s even more.

“Yeah, Pat, just like that.” Jonny’s cock is full against the bed now. He rolls his hips down, seeking pressure.

“Hang on. Just gotta spread you open more.” Patrick keeps a hand on his upper back as his fingers scissor back and forth, pressing on Jonny’s walls, but also pressing on that spot and how did Jonny never know this was there?

“Can you do three?” Patrick asks.

“Yes. Anything. I don’t care,” he says, and Patrick laughs.

“Does that mean you _don’t_ care if I put my cock in there?”

“Patrick,” Jonny whines, and Patrick’s usually the whiny one, but Jonny feels like he’s being dangled on the end of a string here every time Patrick’s fingers touch that spot. He’s liking this part, loving it, but the thought of Patrick’s cock in him makes his own jerk and leak against the bed.

“Only kidding,” Patrick says with a low chuckle. “Do you know how hard I am right now? Just watching you, Jonny…nothing could keep me from being inside you right now.”

Jonny moans. He can’t even remember what he was worried about a half hour ago. He’s full up on the feel of Patrick. “Come on. I… _Patrick_...”

“Okay.” Patrick sounds breathless now. “Just gotta…” Patrick’s fingers withdraw, and Jonny hears him going for the oil again.

When he speaks again, it’s near Jonny’s ear. “I’m going to enter you now, okay, Jonny? You ready?”

Jonny whines. He’s breathing hard, and he can’t find any words, just raises his ass up as far as he can.

“I’m taking that as a yes,” Patrick says, and he spreads Jonny’s cheeks and guides his cock in.

The pressure of it is shocking. Jonny’s whole body stiffens up right away. It’s so much more than Pat’s fingers, opening him more than he would have thought possible, and he can’t—

“Sh,” Patrick says, breathing fast. “You need to relax your muscles, love,” and the shock of the endearment makes Jonny gasp and open up so that Patrick slips all the way inside.

“Oh God,” Patrick says. “Jonny, you feel…”

“How are you so large,” Jonny mumbles into the pillow, and Patrick chokes out a giggle.

“Sorry,” he says, “sorry, I should try to be less impressive.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jonny says, and he tries clenching around Patrick.

Patrick goes still above him. “Jonny,” he moans.

“Good?” Jonny asks. He feels—strange, full, dizzy with it…

Patrick’s forehead thunks against his shoulder blades. “You have no idea.”

“So why don’t you show me,” Jonny says, lifting his ass a little. He thinks he can take it now.

“Okay,” Patrick says breathlessly, “okay, I will,” and then he’s moving.

The first few thrusts just feel strange again—too full, like when Patrick first entered him. Then something shifts, and the next thrust bursts with golden pleasure.

“Yeah,” Jonny says, gasping, “like that,” and then Patrick hits that spot more often than not.

Patrick’s murmuring above him, oh Gods and “Jonny you’re so…” and Jonny can feel him rocking down, Patrick’s cock actually _in him_ and his body stretched along Jonny’s. He didn’t think anything could feel more intimate than the way they hold each other at night but this does, somehow. It’s like the way a man should be with a woman—and that ruins it, for a moment, until Patrick hits that spot again and gasps into the back of Jonny’s neck and wraps all around him and there’s no thought that could destroy how good this is right now.

Patrick’s thrusts get ragged, and Jonny trembles under each one of them. “More,” he keeps saying, nonsensically, because Patrick is giving him more. Patrick is giving him everything, and his whole body is burning with it. He rubs his cock against the bed with every thrust, and the bright burning pleasure blooming in his gut is making it hard to hold on. He wants to, because he doesn’t ever want this to end, but—

“Jonny,” Patrick cries out, and the hot flood of his come fills Jonny’s passage. Jonny seizes up and feels himself spill over, caught under Patrick’s weight and filled with his seed. Where he wants to be, always.

He’s shaking with it, even after he comes down. The pleasure snaps at his skin in little shocky bursts. He feels—lost again, too open, despite Patrick’s dick still buried deep within him. “Patrick,” he says.

“Sh,” Patrick says, mouth open on Jonny’s shoulder. His hand nestles in Jonny’s hair, his body pressed all along Jonny’s. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”

They shift to the side a little, and his other arm comes up around Jonny’s chest. Jonny grips his hand around Patrick’s and holds on and tries to slow his breathing.

“Always got you,” Patrick murmurs.

***

It gets a little easier after that. Things could still change at any moment—but they haven’t yet, and Jonny will take Patrick while he can get him.

There’s no reason they can’t go back to Sevilla, but neither of them is thinking about it, at first. Jonny figures they’ll keep moving up the coast, maybe try somewhere inland for a while. But then they meet that damn traveler who tells them about the wonders of the new world the explorers are bringing back, and that’s that.

“The wonders of the new world, Jonny,” Patrick says, grabbing his arm after the traveler’s gone, and if Jonny hadn’t already known he was doomed, he would now.

“It’s probably just the kind of thing you’d see at a circus,” Jonny says.

“Um, no, it’s a whole new world,” Patrick says.

Jonny doesn’t bother putting up too much of a fight. He knows he won’t win. Besides, that night when Patrick takes him to bed and demands that Jonny fuck him, Patrick murmurs the whole time about what they’re going to see, and that alone makes it worth it.

Jonny will never get used to the sensation of being inside Patrick, nor of Patrick being inside him. “Which do you like better?” Patrick asks him that night when they’re both coming down, his mouth against Jonny’s ear.

“Both,” Jonny says into the skin of Patrick’s neck. “I like both better.” _I like anything with you better,_ he thinks.

He’s glad he let Patrick talk him into coming back to Sevilla, when they get there. Partly because it’s so full of people right now, way more so than it was a few years back—everyone excited to see the wonders coming back from the new world and to earn some money from the trade. But there’s also the thing where they walk by the marketplace where they first met, and Patrick jumps up on the wall and waggles his eyebrows at him. “You remember? Huh?”

“No, I’ve lost my memory already,” Jonny says, just so Patrick will use his temporary height to shove at him. Which he does.

And there’s the thing where they don’t even talk about renting a room; they go looking at rooftops in the northern part of town, still not talking about it, but searching for the one they were living on when things first started in a different way.

Jonny’s pretty sure they find it. Patrick fucks him under the stars.

***

It’s the dice game that’s to blame for pretty much everything that follows.

For the record, Jonny never wanted to play with loaded dice. Well, okay, they were his idea. But only because Patrick insisted on gambling, and Jonny wasn’t about to let him throw all their money away.

Usually they’re not much of a problem. Because Jonny knows when to quit.

It’s Patrick’s face, though. Patrick’s face when the other guys throw a map down on top of the pile of gold—gold that Jonny and Patrick have already won, thank you very much—and Patrick unfurls it to see El Dorado. There’s just no resisting the face Patrick makes at him then, even if Jonny has spent much of the last eight years cursing whatever deity decided it was a good idea to give such innocent, wide blue eyes to someone as devious as Patrick.

He already knows this map going to be trouble.

The trouble comes a minute later, when they get caught with the dice and pull their fake-fight routine for the guards and duel themselves up onto a neighboring roof. Jonny thinks maybe they’ll be okay after that. Turns out, not so much—being chased by both a bull and the guards in one day is a lot, even for them—but still, everything that followed could have been avoided if they had jumped off the roof into any other two barrels of water. Barrels of water that weren’t about to be loaded onto a ship bound for the new world.

“I hate you,” he says later, when they’re in their cell on board the ship, because it turns out Cortes is not fond of stowaways.

“Do not,” Patrick says, smirking because he knows he’s right. Which he is. Goddamn it. “And hey, it’s an adventure. We could have ended up on a boring ship.”

This is so the opposite of what Jonny was just thinking that he can’t roll his eyes hard enough. “I think the boring part will be when we’re _slaves_ in _Cuba_ for _the rest of our lives.”_

Patrick elbows him in the side. “So how about an escape plan?”

“I hate you so much,” Jonny says, before trying to come up with an escape plan.

Which would have gone fine, if it hadn’t been for the horse.

Granted, the horse is what made it possible in the first place. But just because a horse brings them a set of cell keys does not mean Jonny wants the horse to end up in a life boat with them. Especially when said horse turns out to have eaten all their supplies.

“Remind me why I ever listen to any of your ideas,” he says to Patrick when the ship is definitely, absolutely out of reach and there’s nothing to prevent them from dying in the open sea.

“Look on the bright side,” Patrick says. “At least things can’t get—”

That’s when the sharks show up.

“Excuse me,” Jonny says. “Were you about to say ‘worse’?”

***

If Jonny has to die in a rowboat, at sea, sitting next to a horse named Altivo, starving and so thirsty he could almost drink seawater, at least he’s doing it with Patrick.

That doesn’t feel like much of a consolation, when they’re baking in the equatorial sun with no land in sight. Patrick’s head is against his shoulder, and that feels like a little more of a consolation. But only just.

By the second day, he’s losing his grip on reality. The sun is so hot it feels like branding irons all over his skin. The water under his fingertips doesn’t even feel wet anymore. Patrick’s making these harsh sounds every time he breathes, sometimes with a little bit of a sound in the back of his throat, and that makes Jonny want to straight up murder someone with an ax, because if Jonny has to die, that’s one thing, that’s not such a waste, but for it to happen to Patrick—

Hang on. The water under his fingertips doesn’t feel wet anymore. 

“Jonny,” Patrick croaks, sitting up. “Jonny!”

“Oh my God.” Their boat is on land. Their boat is on _land,_ and Jonny’s so happy he could bend down and kiss the sand.

That is, until they see the human skull.

***

The horse has more sense than Patrick, it turns out, because while it turns tail and runs back to the boat with Jonny, Patrick keeps standing on the beach. Yelling about a map.

“How the fuck do you even still have the map?” Jonny asks while Patrick jumps up and down a little because there’s a rock shaped like an eagle’s head and that means, apparently, that they’re going to find El Dorado.

“The city of gold, Jonny!” Patrick says. “Gold streets. Gold temples. Gold buildings with gold walls you can just pluck the gold out of.”

“Yeah, and gold inhabitants who will probably _eat us_ and leave our bones on the beach like they did to this guy,” Jonny says.

“It will be an adventure,” Patrick says, and curse him, because his eyes have gone really bright, and how is Jonny ever supposed to say no to Patrick?

“Also, I’m pretty sure the only alternative is rowing back to Spain,” Patrick adds, and now he’s smirking and making practical arguments on top of his usual Patrick-type arguments and _still_ looking at Jonny like he does in the middle of sex sometimes and that’s just dirty pool. Jonny’s had no training in this level of onslaught.

“Ugh. Fine,” Jonny says, and Patrick whoops and turns to the jungle with open arms. If Jonny grins maybe a little bit, after Patrick’s turned away, no one needs to know.

Except Altivo, who looks all too knowing. Damn that horse.

***

It turns out that traveling in the jungle is difficult. Who knew?

Well, Jonny should have, if he’d spent two seconds thinking about it. If he hadn’t been staring at Patrick’s stupid bright blue eyes and thinking that this would make him happy.

“I hate your stupid face,” he says that night when they’re trying to go to sleep under some low-hanging leaves. Some low-hanging wet leaves, as it happens. And, getting dripped on? Not conducive to sleep.

“Sure you do,” Patrick says, nuzzling Jonny’s neck with said stupid face. He mouths at Jonny’s collarbone, and yeah, hate might be a strong word. Though not that strong, considering the cavern of mud and the tangly vines and the attack birds and the itchy patch on Jonny’s ankle that just might drive him insane—

Yeah. Jonny regrets every moment that led him to this. He pulls Patrick farther under him to shield him from the drips, presses a kiss to his curls, and manages to go to sleep.

The next day isn’t quite as bad. Jonny still won’t let Patrick eat any of the berries, obviously, but they find some large fruits that probably aren’t poisonous (because Jonny’s never heard of a large poisonous fruit; that would just be weird). And then they find the hot spring, and when they’ve been in it for five minutes and haven’t been accosted by anything poisonous, ravenous, or plain old trying to kill them, Patrick sidles up to Jonny and Jonny pulls him close and guides Patrick’s fingers between his legs until Patrick gets with the program and fucks him. It’s been a few days, and they don’t have any proper lube, but the water is warm and Patrick is pulsing inside of him and for once Jonny can shout as loud as he wants when he comes without worrying that anyone will hear and guess what they’re doing.

A few birds seem startled, but Jonny doesn’t have a lot of love for birds right now.

The craziest part is how the map seems to be working. Jonny thought it would be a thing where they’d stumble around the forest for a few days, and Patrick would get all dejected and Jonny would hate that but also get to act a little smug, and then they’d give up and figure out a way to get back to Spain.

But Patrick keeps finding the things. The spread-eagle cave, and the crying-woman waterfall, and the cliff shaped like a tiger’s mouth: the kind of things you’d expect to be exaggerated for map-making purposes, but they’re not. They’re really there.

And, holy God (the God Jonny tries not to think about much, because he’s pretty sure He isn’t too happy with what he’s doing with Patrick), does Patrick love it. “Think of the gold, Jonny!” he says every time they find another landmark, and Jonny laughs, because if anyone can lead them to a city full of enough gold to keep them happy for the rest of their lives, it’s Patrick.

It’s like Patrick’s a twelve year old exploring a new city for the first time. It’s almost enough to make Jonny forget the biting fish and the food-stealing armadillos and the monkey fleas. Jonny didn’t quite realize before now how much Patrick has mellowed over the years, gotten a little quieter, a little less excited about things, until he sees him reignited like this. It makes him think that maybe he hasn’t been good for Patrick, these past few years—that maybe he’s been holding him back, keeping him from living the life he loves—

And then they’re tumbling down a cliff, and Jonny thinks they’re actually going to die, and if Patrick does live Jonny’s going to kill him.


	4. Chapter 4

Okay, so El Dorado is a big rock. At least they don’t hit their heads on it.

“It’s a big rock,” he says to Patrick. A carved obelisk, to be precise, in the middle of—nothing. A whole lot of nothing.

“Do you think Cortes got here before us?” Patrick asks, actually concerned.

“What, and stole all the _really_ big rocks?” Jonny asks.

He only has time to consider about five ways of killing Patrick for leading them on this stupid quest in the first place, before the native people show up. First a girl, carrying a wrapped round thing Jonny’s pretty sure she’s not supposed to have, and then some other people who don’t seem to like her very much, based on the way they’re chasing her.

They seem to like Jonny and Patrick a little more. At least, they don’t kill them right away. They do grab them and start marching them away at spear point, though, so that’s not looking too good.

“I told you they were going to kill us,” Jonny whispers to Patrick when they’re on a boat, heading through some twisty passages that were definitely not on the map.

“They are not,” Patrick says, though Jonny thinks he’s just being stubborn, based on how terrified he looks. “Look, they love us.”

He waves at the guy steering the boat, who does actually wave back, if maybe he looks confused.

Jonny edges nearer to Patrick, just to make it absolutely clear that if anyone wants to kill Patrick, they have to go through him. Which they would. In about two seconds. With their big machete blades. But it’s the principle of the thing.

He’s giving all the people on the boat threatening glares as they sail through a stone archway, and—okay, yeah. Jonny has to admit it: he may be regretting this trip with every fiber of his being, but the city is pretty spectacular.

“Not a bad last sight, eh?” Patrick whispers to him.

“Shut up.” Jonny’s calculating angles, trying to figure out how far Altivo can jump. “It’s not going to be our last sight.”

Except before he can put any of his escape plans into practice—and, all right, before he can actually come up with any escape plans, because the river’s really wide, okay?—the men on the boat grab their arms and put them on Altivo’s back and get a really, really good grip on Altivo and lead them forward.

Towards a temple. With a really freaky-looking man in front of it.

Patrick is sitting in front of him on the horse. Jonny hates that, would rather put Patrick behind him, except then Jonny couldn’t see him, and that would be a different problem. He settles for wrapping his arms around Patrick’s waist and glaring at anyone who looks at him.

Which is, of course, everyone, because they’re being marched in front of a crowd. Jonny tightens his arms around Patrick’s waist, and Patrick settles back into him a little. Jonny regrets every time he ever wished any harm to him, even if he never really meant it.

“Patrick,” he says, because he can’t say any of the things he wants to. He settles his chin on Patrick’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” Patrick says, just a quiet breath, agreeing. He tilts his head a little, noses at Jonny’s jaw, and says, in a voice even quieter, “Sorry about that girl in Barcelona.”

And Jonny’s world ends.

***

Someone is talking. It doesn’t matter, though. Jonny’s stuck on Patrick’s words: they’re repeating, over and over in his head, and they can’t possibly make sense. They can’t mean what he thought they meant, except that they do, of course they do, and he’s having trouble breathing—

Then Patrick makes a little noise, just a “Huh?”, quiet and incredulous, and that’s enough to make Jonny catch the next thing the creepy guy says:

“Citizens,” he booms out. “Did I not predict the gods would come to us?”

And…wait.

Jonny’s a little slow right now, at least half his brain still revolving on those words (Sorry about that girl in Barcelona sorry about that girl that girl that girl), but he’s still pretty sure that man just called them gods.

That’s a good thing. It has to be a good thing; even Jonny can dimly recognize that. Except then Patrick, of course Patrick (don’t think about it don’t think about it), mentions something about their wrath, and—oh.

He’s defending the girl. Of course he’s defending the girl, the one who found them by the rock, the one with all the curves and the big brown eyes that Jonny only notices now because Patrick’s noticing. Patrick’s coming to her aid, just like he came to Jonny’s once upon a time and Jonny wants to sink through the horse and into the ground because he’s been so stupid—

“Oh, but we do want to see your wrath!” the creepy priest guy says. “Show us, please!”

There’s a pause. Jonny grabs Patrick’s wrist a little too hard and pulls him away. “We just, uh, need a second,” he says, and then to Patrick, in a voice that’s just barely not shaking, “Patrick, what have you—”

“No, this is perfect,” Patrick says. His face is shining. “They think we’re gods, Jonny.”

He starts going on about it, and Jonny just can’t. Patrick’s talking about gods and gold and the city and his face is so alive and his hands are working like they do when he’s coming up with an idea, like it’s the two of them in this together, and the ground feels unstable and Jonny still can’t make his breath work and he wasn’t wrong about the girl in Barcelona—

“Just STOP,” he yells, with force he didn’t know he had.

Everything stops. Everyone stops, all the people and the roaring in Jonny’s ears and the shaking that maybe he wasn’t imagining. For a second it’s all stillness, and Jonny stares at Patrick’s startled face.

Then everyone starts to cheer.

“What…” Jonny says, and Patrick wheels around. 

“Jonny, look,” he says, and points to a volcano in the distance.

There’s a puff of smoke above it, but nothing else. No reason to pay attention to it, unless… Jonny looks back at Patrick in astonishment. “Did we just…”

“All hail the gods!” someone shouts, and they get escorted away to the roaring sound of applause.

***

It doesn’t matter, Jonny tells himself as they climb what has to be the tallest staircase in the world. It was always just a question of timing anyway: if it hadn’t been last year, it would have been this year, or the next. He’s always known Patrick isn’t his to keep. This is probably good: break it to him now, when he has all the distractions of a new world and a potentially life-or-death situation to distract him.

That’s it, he thinks as Patrick grabs him by the arms and spins around in the most sumptuous room either of them has ever been in, and he watches Patrick’s eyes go wide with delight; he’ll let himself be distracted.

“They think we’re gods,” Patrick says, laughing. “They actually think…”

Jonny tries a chuckle, and it almost sounds like a sound he would make normally. “It’s an entire city full of suckers.”

And that’s when the girl steps out from behind a curtain.

***

The girl is wearing scraps of fabric that would have made any woman back in Spain blush, and Patrick’s looking at her. Like he looks at the women he flirts with in the markets. Like he looked at the woman in the tent, back in Barcelona. And Jonny…

Jonny. Is. Fine.

He’s totally fine. He’s aggressively fine. Probably no one in history has ever been as fine as he is right now. In fact, he's so fine that it takes him at least five minutes to realize that this girl—Chel—is calling them on not being gods.

“I want in,” she says, “so I can get out of here,” and—whatever. Nothing he can’t handle. Chel coming with them, always being there for Patrick to look at? It’s—whatever.

He grabs Patrick’s arm as Chel’s leaving, though, because he is a professional, and that’s a perfectly valid reason for what he’s about to say. “You know she’s trouble, right?”

“Hm?” Patrick asks, looking away from Chel’s retreating back. Slowly. Jonny does not watch him.

“If they find us out, we’re dead,” he says, and maybe his fingers clamp a little harder on Patrick’s arm, but that’s just because it’s an important point. “We need to do three things: get some gold. Get out of here. And find a way back to Spain. That means that Chel is…”

“Our new partner?” Patrick says.

Jonny chokes. He…

“No,” he finally manages. “No. She’s…off limits. Okay?”

Something changes in Patrick’s face: closes off, maybe. Jonny has a moment of panic, and he wants to protest that it doesn’t mean what Patrick might think it means. It’s just—it’s for the job, okay? He’s not _jealous._ It’s not because—

“Right,” Patrick says. He twists his arm out of Jonny’s hold. “Off limits. Got it.”

***

Patrick flirts with everyone at the feast that night.

Jonny doesn’t think he’s seen Patrick smirk at this many people since the day they tried to sell iron coins painted like gold. It doesn’t help that everyone in the city wants to come and smile at the gods, so Patrick has even more attention than he usually does, which is a fair amount. Jonny sits back and tries not to glower too obviously and drinks a lot of wine.

The wine makes it worse later when they’re stumbling back to their room, Patrick all loose-limbed and leaning against him for support. It’s a way he’s seen Patrick a lot, over the years, coming back from a night at a pub, and they’ve almost always followed it by tumbling onto a bed together and making quick work of their clothing. Jonny’s body is conditioned for it, making him want to lean right back and lick at Patrick’s ear and get a hard thigh in between his own. He fights it, but it’s a rough pulse low in his gut, how much he wants.

It doesn’t help that it seems to be having the same effect on Patrick. Whatever weirdness Patrick felt about the Chel thing earlier is apparently gone, and he’s draping himself over Jonny as they stumble up the staircase. “Come on, Jonny,” he whispers as he licks up under his jaw. “Don’t you wanna be with a god?”

Jonny feels ill.

Patrick follows him when he finds his way to the cushions that have been piled in the middle of the room as a bed. He collapses on Jonny, a familiar warm, muscled weight that’s snug against him. “’Onny,” he mumbles into the skin of Jonny’s arm, slurring away the first consonant and rolling his hips against Jonny’s in a way that brings their cocks together.

Jonny’s cock throbs. He lifts Patrick up a little and shifts his own hips away. “Tired,” he says, trying not to make the word too clipped.

“Never let that stop us before,” Patrick mumbles, but he’s too close to sleep himself to do much about it. Jonny lets him drop off, his breath evening out in the snuffly way it gets when Patrick’s drunk, and then he moves away so their bodies aren’t touching when he falls asleep.

***

The brightness of the sunlight feels like a blow to his face when the priest wakes them up the next morning.

“’Sgoing on?” Patrick asks into Jonny’s neck, because he’s apparently shifted back on top of him during the night. Jonny feels a wave of nausea that’s only partly because of his hangover.

It doesn’t matter much, though, because they get pulled out into the (way too bright) sunshine and dragged onto the top of a cliff. Jonny’s worried for a moment before everyone’s cheering and offering them tribute and—

Um. Human sacrifice. That’s not a good thing.

“Hey,” he’s saying, before he thinks about it, “stop,” and Patrick’s right behind him, backing him up. He didn’t think to check—it’s so ingrained, the knowledge that Patrick will be there—and he feels a rush of relief when he realizes it’s still true. That hasn’t changed, yet.

The priest guy, Tzekel-Kan, doesn’t look happy. He looks even less happy when the chief elder brings out the alternate tribute, which turns out to be—

“Wow,” Patrick whispers, breath tickling Jonny’s ear in a way he forgets to move away from, because, wow.

That is a lot of gold.

***

“We thought you’d be staying a bit longer,” the chief elder says when Jonny and Patrick show up in his chambers. “The next thousand years or so.”

Jonny has to choke back a laugh. As if he wants anything to do with this place where everything has fallen apart. He doesn’t even care what comes next; he just wants to get out of here. “No,” Jonny says. “Nope, I think we’ll be leaving. Gods’ duties, and all that.”

The chief looks back at them with kind of big eyes. “To build a boat large and glorious enough would take…about a week.”

It’s actually better than Jonny would have thought. But before he can say anything, Patrick speaks up. “Hm,” he says. “I wonder how long it would take Tzekel-Kan to do it.”

Jonny should be used to it by now when Patrick manages to pull wonders out of the air, like remembering the priest’s name and figuring out how to play the priest and the chief off each other. But he’s always amazed anyway, and right now the amazement hurts.

The chief startles, sits up a little straighter at Patrick’s words. “But—but for the gods. Three days.”

Three days. Jonny can do this for three days. And then—

He’s not thinking about what will happen then.

***

Chel comes back to their room with them, which is all Jonny needs to make this day even worse. Granted, Patrick hasn’t actively been hitting on her after yesterday, and she was pretty helpful when it came to not getting their gold thrown down a whirlpool into the spirit world or whatever, but he still doesn’t want her around. It’s too hard to act like he’s supposed to, when she’s around. Too hard to keep Patrick from noticing.

“Three days,” Jonny says, smoothing his palms down his legs and trying to sound cheerful, when they’re back in the room. “We just have to lie low for three days. We can do that.”

Of course they can’t do that. Jonny doesn’t know why he thought they could. Lying low isn’t a thing Patrick does. Jonny turns his back for two seconds, and Patrick is off, probably exploring the city and having a grand time of it.

“God damn it,” he says, when he turns around to find Patrick gone.

“Invoking your own power?” Chel asks.

“Har har,” Jonny says. He had kind of forgotten she was there. He sinks down onto the couch and tries to decide what to do.

The thing is, it’s almost never a good idea to interrupt Patrick when he’s in the middle of some hare-brained scheme, because hard as it is to believe, he usually has an actual plan for not getting in trouble. Sometimes it’s a stupid plan that doesn’t work, but he’s good at getting himself out of those situations, too, and—and Jonny’s not Patrick’s keeper. He can’t think of himself like that anymore. He needs to let him do his own thing.

He’s trying to convince himself of that, that he really has to stay here and not rescue Patrick from making a ruin of this god situation, when Chel’s hands land on his shoulders.

And...that. That’s not a friendly touch.

“Whoa!” Jonny springs up and whirls around. Chel’s looking at him, one hip cocked, eyes unmistakably inviting.

Jonny’s gotten that look before. It’s never scared him quite as much as this.

“You just need to relax,” she says, slinking towards him again. He stumbles back, hands up to ward her off.

“No, no, I’m good,” he says.

She raises an eyebrow. He bites down on a wave of bright, sharp panic, and this is the problem. The part where he doesn’t look at her and want to put his hands on her curves, that’s the problem.

What if…what if she figures it out? What if she tells Patrick?

“Uh, it’s not that I don’t want to,” he says quickly. “Obviously I do. I was just thinking, um…that it’s not a good time right now?”

She stares at him, unimpressed. He feels another burst of panic at how bad he is at this. 

“It’s just…major con, you know. Gold. Spain. Boat. Uh.” God, she’s getting closer, and he’s not getting any air. “Maybe, er, another time?”

She smirks at him, the kind that makes Jonny feel like he’s been caught out. He bites down on his lip. “Too bad,” she says. “I’m free now.”

If Patrick were here, he’d be all over her.

And—that’s it. If Patrick can do it, if that’s what he wants them to be, then Jonny can do it, too. No matter the sharp and metallic taste he’s got in his mouth right now. He can do this.

“Well,” he says, trying for suave, “I guess now’s okay.”

She smiles at him, and he takes a step forward.


	5. Chapter 5

He’s been with Patrick so many times. This feels totally different.

Chel is—very enthusiastic. She guides Jonny’s fingers under her skirt and touches them between her legs, where she’s wet and soft in a way that Jonny’s never felt before. She rises and trembles when he touches here there, and it’s…

It’s not terrible. He puts his fingers inside of her as she gets wetter, and she pushes against them. She guides him a little more, gets his thumb to rub against her while his fingers thrust. She’s arching now, panting hard, and she cries out as her walls clench around him. It reminds him of how Patrick—

Jonny takes his fingers out, falls back a little. He’s breathing as hard as she is, just after her climax, and in his case it’s not due to arousal.

He sits there awkwardly as she comes down. She’s making these little sighing noises and smiling like she’s content. He wonders if he can get away with leaving now—if maybe that was enough—

She rises up on an elbow, flushed and sated, and gives him a smirk. “Come on. Don’t you want to fuck me?”

Jonny startles a little and meets her eyes. It would be—it would be—

Not Patrick.

“Yeah,” he says, and hopes she takes the unsteadiness in his voice for arousal.

He’s not hard yet, but he palms himself through his pants. Patrick did this, he reminds himself. Jonny can, too. It’ll be just like going inside Patrick: the harsh squeeze of his walls, the bare expanse of his back, the way he presses back and moans when Jonny hits the right spot…

Jonny’s getting hard now, finally. He pushes down his pants.

Chel giggles when he moves on top of her, hesitant even though he’s trying not to be. “First time?” she asks, and he growls a no. He’s done this so many times. Just not…not with bare breasts pointing up at him, soft curves, a woman’s lips parting…

He closes his eyes and pushes into her. It feels different, but it’s sort of okay. And he can imagine—

He doesn’t imagine anything. That’s not the point of this. It’s not about the way Chel’s slick feels different from the oil he and Patrick like, or the way the skin of her belly is too soft and her limbs too round. It’s about being different than he always has been. Making himself want something else.

She moves under him as he thrusts. He doesn’t like that, because the rhythm feels unfamiliar. “Do I need to help you get there?” she asks, teasing. She clenches down around him, and he remembers how Patrick did that, just a couple of weeks ago—

He comes, gasping out soundless syllables and almost collapsing onto her. He manages to catch himself at the last second and rolls to the side.

Chel arches and stretches underneath him. “Mm, that was good.”

Jonny stares at the ceiling and breathes.

***

There’s a ball game that afternoon. It’s supposed to be about Jonny and Patrick defeating a group of twenty athletes at a game they’ve never played before, because they’re gods and they can do anything.

Jonny’s never felt less like a god. All of his interactions with Patrick feel off. He remembers the synchronicity they had in hundreds of games of street ball, working together so well that it was like they were sharing thoughts.

He can’t tell what Patrick’s thinking now. He just feels numb. Every once in a while he brushes against Patrick and catches himself remembering the way Chel looked when she came under his fingers, and—

“Get it together,” Patrick hisses at him when they miss another pass and the horde of mammoth players practically tramples over them on their way to score.

“Like there’s anything we can do against them?” Jonny says.

“We could at least try,” Patrick says. “We’re Jonny and Patrick,” and Jonny stumbles against the wall of the court and slams his knee hard enough to bruise.

They’re saved from their own incompetence when Chel throws an armadillo into play instead of the ball, and it scrambles into their goal over and over. It’s possibly the most ignominious victory Jonny has ever had, but the alternative is death, so he’ll take it. He’s all about the lesser of two evils, these days.

“And now,” creepy priest guy says when Jonny and Patrick are standing there in improbable victory, grinning breathlessly, “the opposing team will be sacrificed to your glory.”

Jonny’s head snaps around at that.

The entire stadium has gone quiet. Except for Patrick: “No,” he says, stepping forward, steel in his tone. “We don’t want any sacrifices.”

“But, my lords,” the priest says. “As the speaker for the gods…”

“The gods are speaking for themselves now,” Patrick says. And Jonny didn’t quite know this was in him, knew he could be filled with energy and passion, but this—

Patrick has stepped closer to Tzekel-Kan, face full of danger, looming over the priest despite being four inches shorter than Jonny. “No more sacrifices,” he says, the entire stadium hanging on every word. “Ever.”

Something changes in Tzekel-Kan’s face. “Mm,” he says. “As…the gods…command.”

He backs away. Jonny should maybe be watching him, but doesn’t have eyes for that right now. Patrick’s breathing hard, face full of dissipating rage and lingering determination. He’s more beautiful than Jonny’s ever seen him, and slowly, as the crowd starts a cheer that swells and overwhelms them, his face breaks into a gorgeous, sunny smile.

Jonny wants to touch him. He wants to put his hands all over Patrick and taste and feel that Patrick is his. Wants to kiss that smile off his face and see that determined look focused on him.

But Patrick slips away somehow during the cheering. Jonny eventually gives up and goes back to their room, hoping Patrick will be there.

Patrick isn’t. Chel is.

This morning was—fine. It was fine. Jonny can do that sort of thing. It’s what people do, and he did it, so—yes.

But the idea of putting his hands on Chel right now makes his stomach twist. Wasn’t once in a day enough?

Apparently not, from the way she turns to him with laughing eyes and reaches out for him as soon as he’s inside the room. “Good game, huh?” she says, and she shouldn’t be laughing about their victory. That was theirs, Jonny’s and Patrick’s. Well—he guesses it was Chel’s also, since it was her idea that made it possible, but it shouldn’t have been. Everything should always be his and Patrick’s, and he catches himself choking on a deep breath and has to work to steady his breathing as she pulls him toward her.

Chel puts her tongue in his mouth. It shouldn’t feel like too much tongue, and so it doesn’t. Jonny knows how to kiss. This is easy. It’s—enjoyable. Yeah.

He hears a noise from the doorway and tries to raise his head. Chel makes a little moan of protest and keeps kissing him, but he breaks his mouth a way from hers and looks up.

At Patrick’s retreating back.

The doorway is in shadow. It’s hard to see anything, but he’s pretty sure that’s Patrick. Walking away.

Jonny wrenches himself away from Chel. The doorway is in shadow, so it’s hard to see anything, but he’s pretty sure that was Patrick’s back. He’d know that back anywhere.

She looks up at him in alarm. “What’s wrong?”

Jonny just shakes his head and wonders why he feels terrible when this is exactly what he wanted to happen.

***

Nothing has changed, Jonny reminds himself as he goes to dinner. Just because Patrick is angled away from him, refusing to look—nothing has changed. Patrick can be mad if he wants to, because all Jonny did was what Patrick did first. And fuck him, anyway. Where does he get off, being upset that Jonny is finally capable of being normal?

Jonny takes a deep, shaky breath. This is supposed to be about making them more solid, not less.

He clears his throat. “So, um. Leaving in a couple of days, huh?”

Patrick seems really interested in the piece of meat he’s cutting up. “That’s the plan,” he says in a downward direction.

“It’ll be nice to be back, won’t it?” Jonny says, trying not to sound like he’s desperate for Patrick to look at him. _Fuck_ Patrick; he started all this, and now he won’t even... “I mean, all that gold,” he babbles. “Living like kings and all.”

Patrick does look up at him then, and wow. Jonny’s never seen Patrick’s eyes look that cold and closed off. “I don’t know, man. I’m thinking about staying here.”

Jonny’s chest goes tight. “What?” he says, about ten seconds too late.

Patrick keeps looking at him with that cold expression. “King is kind of a step down from god, isn’t it?”

Jonny doesn’t even have a reply for that, because that’s not the point. The point is him—and Patrick—and doesn’t Patrick know that? Doesn’t he know that them being together is the most important thing, the only important thing, and that if Jonny loses him—

He opens his mouth to start yelling some of that, and that that’s when the huge stone jaguar bursts from the top of the pyramid.

***

Jonny screams. Patrick screams. Everyone screams. The thing is massive, half the size of the pyramid itself, with glowing green eyes and jaws that look like they could crush a triple-masted schooner in a single bite. There aren’t any triple-masted schooners about, so it settles for stomping the people of El Dorado.

Everyone runs, which seems like a great idea. Jonny throws himself out of his chair and bolts up a slope, Patrick right next to him, and—oh, thank God, there’s Altivo. Jonny doesn’t even know where he’s been these past few days, but he’s never been so glad to see a horse in his life.

“Jonny!” he hears, and there’s Chel on the ground behind them, about to be chomped by the jaguar.

“Fuck,” he says under his breath, then, “Altivo! Get Chel out of here!”

The horse wheels around and goes back for her, and there goes their means of escape. Naturally, this is when the jaguar decides to go for them.

Jonny grabs Patrick’s arm and pulls him up the slope. The jaguar follows them. They scramble over a ridge—and into the mouth of a volcano.

Patrick screams and Jonny grabs him tight as a wave of heat hits them. They’re on a piece of floating rock, not actively burning yet, so maybe they’d be okay if it weren’t for the huge jaguar that’s, oh God, leaping right on top of them.

The beast lands on the edge of their chunk of rock. It tips terrifyingly, but—”Yes,” Jonny screams, because the rock tilts just enough that they can run up toward the edge of the volcano. They bolt for the edge of the crater, just in time, because then the jaguar slips off the edge of their rock and into the molten depths.

“Thank God.” Jonny sags in relief on the lip of the crater. He only gets about two seconds of that, though, because then the jaguar emerges—molten hot.

Jonny and Patrick scream some more. Then they’re panic-running, no idea where they’re going. Away from the molten-hot jaguar, that’s the thing, and Jonny is so focused on that that he doesn’t even realize they’ve run onto the ceremonial cliff where they do their human sacrifices. The one with—yup, the one with the huge drop into the swirling abyss.

Jonny manages to stop just in time. Patrick skids next to him and pinwheels his arms and looks utterly panicked, and Jonny grabs him and steadies him and feels Patrick’s pulse racing frantically under his touch.

The jaguar lands with a crash on the rock behind them. Jonny turns to face it, ready for probable death.

And its glowy green eyes go out.

That—doesn’t seem right. Jonny’s just wondering what’s happened to his imminent doom when Tzekel-Kan emerges from the shadows beneath the beast.

“I know what you are,” he says, manic gleam in his eyes. “And I know what are are not. And you are. Not. Gods.”

There’s no way out. Tzekel-Kan and his huge stone jaguar before them, the gaping pit behind. Jonny wants to wrap Patrick up in his arms and flee, but there’s nowhere to run.

Jonny’s had practice in nowhere to run.

He shoves at Patrick. “You’re not a god?” he demands.

Patrick gives him a startled look. Jonny raises his eyebrows, tilts his head a little, hints at Patrick to play along. But Patrick’s eyes turn stony.

That’s…not part of the act. Patrick’s shoulders are hunched in on themselves, chin jutting out, and his eyes slide away. Jonny shoves him again. “How dare you,” he says, all dramatic and exaggerated.

Patrick still doesn’t shove back. Instead he turns to Tzekel-Kan. “It was his stupid plan,” he says in a voice that sounds all too honest, and Jonny feels a wave of hurt.

“My plan?” he says, moving toward Patrick so that they’re both closer to Tzekel-Kan. “I’m not the one who decided he likes being a god. You’re—you’re buying your own con!”

“At least I’m not dating it,” Patrick says, and the look that flashes through his eyes when he does makes Jonny mad.

“It’s not like I started this,” Jonny says, and now he’s the too-honest one. Tzekel-Kan is just behind them, smiling in delight at their fight. “You—you said we were partners.”

“Well, now you have Chel,” Patrick says, leaning forward, and the anger in his stance is real. “What do you need me for?”

“Maybe I don’t,” Jonny shouts.

He sees something break in Patrick’s face. It’s so horrible that he wants to take it back, admit he didn’t mean it, drop the act, anything. But before he can do anything, Patrick wheels around and smashes his fist into Tzekel-Kan’s face.

There’s a lot of force in the punch. Tzekel-Kan flies through the air and skids across the rock toward the abyss. He slows to a stop just before the edge.

It was the final step in their act, but it doesn’t feel like it was an act. Jonny can’t look anywhere near Patrick right now.

“Right,” he says in a small voice. He picks up a couple of vines at their feet and hands one to Patrick without looking. “Let’s—let’s tie him up.”

He’s just taken a step forward when there’s a roar behind them. Jonny turns around to see the jaguar spring to life and charge.

Jonny dives away blindly. His feet miss the edge of the platform as the jaguar flies by, and he tumbles in panic for a moment until the vine catches and holds. Patrick—he can’t see Patrick—

He swings dizzily through the air. Above him, he hears the crash at the jaguar hits the far end of the jutting rock, where Tzekel-Kan landed. There’s a sharp noise as the platform starts to crack.

Huge boulders are falling down around Jonny’s ears, and he still can’t see Patrick. The whole platform creaks under the impact. It trembles perilously for a moment, before the whole outcropping gives way with a boom and plummets into the abyss.

Jonny holds onto his vine for dear life. Even before the dust starts to clear, he peers frantically though the clearing dust and—yes.

There’s Patrick. Swinging on his own vine next to the cliff-face, dusty and battered but alive.

Jonny smiles without thinking. He’s going to say something, something happy and relieved and maybe even sarcastic about how they could possibly have survived, but Patrick’s face makes him stop.

Jonny’s never seen that expression on his face before. It’s anger, and it’s hatred, and it’s mixed with something else that gets him in the gut: something like…bitterness. Patrick looks at him with all these things, and then, slowly and deliberately, moves his gaze away. Like he’s never going to look back again.

And Jonny—Jonny feels something much, much more important than the cliff face break and crumble away beneath him.


	6. Chapter 6

Somehow Jonny ends up on a boat stacked with gold and Chel.

He feels numb again. He’s felt numb since the cliff face, all through the cheers of the townsfolk and the way Patrick smiled at their adulation like he refuses to smile at Jonny anymore. 

Patrick’s standing on the dock, angled away from Jonny like he has been for the past day. The chief elder is making a speech about how grateful he is to Lord Jonny for having been with them. The boat is being loaded, ready to sail off and never return. And Patrick is facing away.

Jonny knows he should be looking somewhere else, but he doesn’t seem to have a lot of control over that at the moment.

The chief elder finishes his speech. Chel appears at his side, and he can hear the smile in her voice. “I think they’re done worshiping you for now. Time for a new adventure, yeah?”

Jonny’s stomach twists. Patrick is still facing away, and Jonny knows he should just walk to the boat, but—

The chief elder goes over and says something to Patrick. Patrick turns, just a little.

Jonny’s eyes widen.

“C’mon,” Chel says, pulling at his elbow. “Are we going or what?”

Patrick’s coming over to them. Jonny tries to breathe, tries not to clench his hands into desperate fists.

Patrick’s curls are brighter than the gold on the boat. He looks up at Jonny when he gets close, just a quick glance, and his eyes are so, so blue.

Jonny should say something. But he can’t speak: all of his insides have been replaced with a feeling of desperation that takes up all of the space in his body and makes it impossible to think.

Neither of them moves for a moment. Then Patrick raises his arms, just a little, and Jonny feels a flare of hope.

The hug isn’t like any he’s had from Patrick before. Patrick’s arms are stiff, his body held away from Jonny. It makes Jonny clutch desperately, and for a second Patrick relaxes against him. Something complicated happens to Jonny’s throat.

Patrick’s hair is right next to his face. Jonny inhales, the familiar scent of dust and sweetness and Patrick and, oh God, he’ll never smell that again. How can this be the end? He can’t go back to Spain without Patrick. He can’t possibly live without him. He’s going to—he doesn’t even know—

His breath gets choked in his chest, and he clutches too tight. “Please,” he whispers into Patrick’s hair.

Patrick twitches, pulls back. His mouth goes soft, opens a little, and Jonny wants to kiss it and never let go. “You—” Patrick starts to say.

“Danger!” someone shouts, and Patrick leaps away. Jonny jerks around, disoriented. “Danger!”

A man is running toward them, panting and frantic. The chief pushes forward to meet him. “What is it?”

The man collapses on the dock. “Approaching the city,” he gasps out. “An army of strangers. Led by Tzekel-Kan.”

***

There’s a plan. Jonny’s supposed to crash his boat into the stones holding up the secret river entrance to El Dorado. The people of El Dorado will create a wave to give him the speed he needs by knocking down one of the massive pillars on the way out, and the tunnel will collapse, and then Cortes’s army won’t be able to get through to the city to conquer it and/or probably kill everyone.

Jonny…is totally on board with this. This is life or death, basically. He’s focused, he’s steering this boat, and he’s not looking back at the dock. He’s _not._

“Pay attention,” Chel says, shoving her elbow into his side.

“Fuck.” Jonny blinks and steers the boat back on track. “Sorry. I’m just…”

Chel rolls her eyes and takes the wheel. “Here, let me.”

Jonny nods and steps aside. He grabs a rope and pulls on it a little, even though it’s already taut, because his arms are shaking. From the adrenaline. Not from anything else. He’s still not looking back. He doesn’t even want to look back. This is important. This is…

“Chel,” he says, his voice cracking, and she looks over at him. Whatever she sees in his face, it must be almost as bad as he feels, because her eyes widen in concern. Maybe…it would be okay for Jonny to say something? Maybe it’s not too late—

“Look out!” someone screams, and they look up to see the huge pillar—the one that wasn’t supposed to come down until they were safely past it—falling right on top of them.

“Fuck,” he says, and _now_ his mind is on the boat. More speed—they need more speed—

“The sail!” Chel shouts. It takes Jonny a second to figure out what she’s talking about, and then he hurls himself across the deck toward the rope securing the mainsail. He tugs on it, to open the sail and give them the speed they need, but it’s stuck.

“Come on, you fucking fucker,” he growls at the rope, but it won’t budge. It won’t budge and the pillar is falling _literally on top of them_ and oh God, he’s never going to see Patrick again—

“Altivo!” he hears above the screams of the El Dorado natives.

Jonny whirls around to see a dark shape hurtling toward them, much faster than the creaking pillar—and it’s Patrick. It’s fucking _Patrick_ , riding on a horse and hurtling toward them. He lands on the deck right in front the sail, and he’s got the rope in his hand, and he tugs until it slips free. The sail billows out beautifully in the fresh wind and carries them right past the falling pillar and into the clear.

“Patrick.” Jonny collapses against the rope he’s holding, and his eyes dart between him and the shore. “But you—”

Patrick quirks a grin at him, panting and still atop his horse. There’s hurt in his face, but it’s more open than Jonny’s seen it in the last day and a half, and—God, he’s so gorgeous. “You didn’t think I’d really let you leave without me, do you?”

Jonny feels a shift inside of him. It’s almost a pain but not like that at all. “Patrick,” he breathes, and he’s moving towards him before he can think about it.

“Watch out!” Chel cries, and they all scream as they plunge into the tunnel.

It’s as if they’ve fallen down that whirlpool at the edge of the cliff: water all around them, swirling and pulling them with so much force that Jonny has to grip the edge of the boat for dear life. He’s rigid with panic, and it’s only when he catches hold of a wrist that he can relax enough to not injure himself. It could be Chel, but he knows that it’s not: he knows this wrist, has held it more times than he can count, has had his mouth over its veins and tendons. He has Patrick. Then the boat goes madly around a turn, still lost in the dark rush of furious water, and Jonny loses hold of everything.

“Patrick!” he tries to yell, but his mouth is full of water. He knows he should be worried for Chel, even for Altivo, heck, for himself, but he can’t help the panic—

Intense pressure for a moment, water squeezing him from behind, and then everything breaks and tumbles forward. The boat splinters on the rocks, and behind them there’s a deafening roar as the rock ceiling of the passageway caves inward.

The only way into El Dorado.

Jonny washes up against the sand and coughs. As soon as he can raise his head, he does, and sees Chel doing the same thing. Just down the river bank is Altivo, shaking the water from his mane, but he can’t see—

Patrick. He’s there, on Jonny’s other side, coughing weakly but alive.

Jonny doesn’t care what else happens, then or ever. His face breaks into an achingly broad smile.

***

They ride for hours.

Cortes is somewhere in the jungle, and they have to get clear of him, but Jonny can’t feel it as a threat. He’s much more focused on the feel of Patrick behind him on the horse, the slightly brushes of Patrick’s hands to his outer thighs when Patrick changes position.

Patrick won’t look at him for very long, when they stop for water and whatever food they can scrounge with Chel’s jungle knowledge. But sometimes he catches Jonny’s eye, and then Jonny can see caution, not much of the brightness he knew of old. But he’s here. He’s still here.

Jonny grits his teeth together, when they get back on the horse; he will get that brightness back. He will.

They finally stop for the night next to a tumble-down rock face with a few natural caves. “No predators in here,” Chel declares when they dismount.

“How can you tell?” Jonny asks.

She gives him a scornful look. “How did you two ever survive in the jungle without me?”

“Yeah, not very well,” Jonny says, but he’s looking at Patrick, who’s wandered away a little, head down, like he’s trying to avoid them.

Chel says something that sounds like, “Psh, of course,” but Jonny’s already going after Patrick.

“Hey,” he says when he’s near enough.

Patrick’s kicking at the thick foliage that crowds up to the base of the rocks. “Hey,” he says. “I thought you’d want—with Chel. Some time.”

“I.” Jonny blows out a breath. “Patrick.” Frustration tingles in his fingertips.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Patrick says, and starts walking away, head down.

Jonny doesn’t know how to make this what it was—has never had to work to make it what it was, before this—but he knows he can’t let Patrick walk away from him again.

“Patrick. Wait.” Jonny goes after him, catches up. He slips his fingers around Patrick’s wrist. “Come with me?”

Patrick looks up, surprise evident in his slack mouth. “Okay,” he says, quiet, after a moment. “If—you want.”

Jonny leads him up the rocks, not sure what he’s looking for, and stops when they reach a little indent partway up the slope. It’s not even a proper cave, but it’s out of view of their campsite and has a little overhang. “In here,” he says, and tugs Patrick after him.

Patrick goes, but when Jonny lets go of his wrist, he stands near the other wall of the little cave, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched.

“Patrick,” Jonny says, and then stops, because he doesn’t know what he wants to say. He just knows he doesn’t want Patrick to leave again. Knows he wants to put his hands on Patrick and not let go. Doesn’t know how everything got so fucked up.

The silence stretches on until Patrick lets out a breath. “Look,” he says in a voice much quieter than normal. “I don’t want to ask too much of you. Just tell me when you’re done with me, okay?”

“What?” Jonny reaches out a hand without thinking, but Patrick moves out of his reach.

“I get that it can’t be forever,” he says. His voice is heartbreakingly small. “Just…tell me when, okay?”

“What? _No.”_ Now Jonny moves forward deliberately, puts his hands on Patrick’s arms. He’s just—so wrong, he doesn’t get it— “No, Patrick.”

Patrick stiffens beneath his touch. He angles his head away from Jonny, as much as he can while Jonny’s holding onto him. “Sorry for making this difficult,” he breathes out.

“No, you—God, no, I’m sorry.” He’s the one who messed this all up. It was Jonny—he got it all wrong—he made Patrick want to leave. “Please, Patrick, don’t go. I don’t want—”

He freezes, forehead a few inches from Patrick’s, hands gripping Patrick’s biceps, because this is the thing he’s been trying so hard not to say. He’s trembled in fear for so many years that Patrick will find out, that it will make him leave.

But now Patrick’s leaving anyway.

Patrick’s still looking down, but Jonny can see the hurt in his face. He can see his eyelashes against his cheeks, the soft skin of the eyelids he’s kissed while they’ve been inside each other.

“I don’t want Chel,” he says, and his voice is only a little bit strangled. “I only want you.”

Patrick startles, raises his head, and Jonny forces himself not to move away and hide. Even if Patrick rejects him for this, he has to stay and hear it. “But…Chel. Why did you…”

Jonny can’t look at him. “It was—the girl. The one in Barcelona.”

Patrick shakes his head, like he doesn’t get it, and that means Jonny’s going to have to explain more.

He draws a careful breath. “I thought you wanted us to be…me to be…like that. Normal.”

It’s hard to say, even though Jonny’s already said the worst thing. Patrick’s still looking at him. “But the girl in Barcelona—I didn’t—it wasn’t like that. Not like you and Chel.”

“What do you mean?” Jonny asks, though he’s not sure he wants to know.

A flush rises in Patrick’s cheeks. Jonny wants to lick them, remembers he’s not allowed to do that right now. “She was selling me things, and I didn’t know how…I let her touch me.” Patrick’s flush deepens. “So that I could figure out how to do it. To you.” He shifts a little. “But then I felt like…”

_“Patrick.”_ Jonny’s hands tighten on his arms.

“Is that why you…” Patrick says, voice breaking a little. “I mean, with Chel…”

“Oh, God.” Jonny got it so wrong. He’s so horrified with himself, and so glad, all at the same time. “I thought it was what I had to do to keep you,” he says, dropping his forehead to Patrick’s.

Patrick makes a little wounded noise, raises his hands to Jonny’s waist. Jonny moves into the touch, slips his hands down Patrick’s sides, and they’re clinging to each other. It’s only been a few days since they’ve been like this, but it seems like so much longer. Years. Jonny can feel Patrick breathing raggedly, and he noses at his hair.

“I thought,” Patrick says in a barely audible whisper. “I thought you wanted her more than me.”

“Oh, God, no.” Jonny holds tighter, so tight he’s probably leaving bruises. “No, Patrick, no, I’m so sorry. God, I’m so sorry.”

“Jonny,” Patrick says, harsh and desperate, and they hold each other like they’ll never let go.

***

It’s a few minutes before they move away from each other enough to kiss, and when they do, it feels new. Patrick’s mouth is so pliant under his, soft and open, and maybe it always felt like this but Jonny didn’t get it, before. That this was his.

“Jonny,” Patrick moans into his mouth. “Need you.”

Patrick needs him. Jonny didn’t know that, before, and it makes him kiss him deeper.

His dick is starting to take notice of Patrick’s warmth against him. It’s a hot, slow arousal, coming alive after the shock of the past few days. He noses down to Patrick’s neck and makes him gasp, and Patrick’s fingers sneak under his shirt to trail on the skin of his stomach. Patrick’s cock is hot and hard alongside Jonny’s.

“What do you want?” he asks, breath hot against Patrick’s shoulder. He feels like he’ll never be able to take his mouth off Patrick’s body.

Patrick’s hips shift against his. “You inside me,” he says. “Like—her, yeah?”

Jonny sucks on his shoulder, laves his tongue over it. “Wanted you,” he says, and Patrick’s fingers dig in, hold on.

It’s hard to find a spot on the cave floor to do it, but Patrick’s mewling and desperate for Jonny’s hands and Jonny needs to touch.

“Always want you,” Jonny says as they strip Patrick of his clothes and use them to cover the ground. It feels so good to say it. “Even when I was touching her. Especially then.” He runs his hand down Patrick’s back and into the cleft between his buttocks. “We don’t have any—”

“Don’t care,” Patrick says. _“Jonny.”_

It’s totally different having Patrick beneath him instead of Chel. Jonny works him open slowly, spit instead of slick, and watches the way it makes Patrick twitch and roll his head back. He kisses Patrick’s stomach, loves the dip and swell of his hipbones, the peaks of his nipples, loves—

“I love you,” he says, and Patrick gasps and arches his hips.

“Jonny, _please—”_

“Yeah,” Jonny says, hands shaking. He pushes in, precome easing the way, and feels Patrick open around him. They both gasp, and their eyes meet. Patrick’s are so blue, even in the evening light, and the openness in his face is everything Jonny was dying for as he watched him on the dock, about to sail away.

“I can’t believe I almost lost you,” he says.

Patrick grabs his hand and squeezes. “Fuck me,” he says, and Jonny thrusts in.

It doesn’t take long, but it feels like forever, the two of them moving in sync as Jonny’s cock slides roughly into Patrick’s passage and pleasure zings up his spine. Jonny tries to draw it out, but Patrick is writhing beneath him, and he has to start thrusting faster. It’s only a few minutes until they’re falling apart, Patrick shaking and fisting his own cock as Jonny’s hips stutter against him. “Love you,” Patrick groans out, and Jonny groans and spills inside of him, overwhelmed by the feeling of rightness.

***

They lie on the floor of the cave for a long while after that, Jonny not caring about the cold roughness of the stone when Patrick’s skin is warm against his.

“It was so wrong with her,” he whispers into Patrick’s shoulder. Patrick’s hand tightens in his hair. Maybe he shouldn’t be saying this, but he feels like he needs to. “I don’t mean—I mean, yes, I shouldn’t have done it, I’m so sorry I did it. But also,” he presses his face into the skin, “it just felt so wrong. It wasn’t—you, it wasn’t…”

“Sh,” Patrick says, his hand running through Jonny’s hair again. “Just us from now on, all right?”

Jonny raises his head, looks at Patrick’s eyes, full of hope and just a little hint of fearful caution that Jonny wants to erase forever. “Just us,” he says, and watches Patrick’s eyes lighten into a smile.

***

They’re a sorry sight when they finally head back to the campsite. They did their best to put themselves back together—straightening hair, brushing each other off, hands maybe lingering longer than they need to—but it’s still pretty obvious they haven’t been sitting around having a conversation.

“Maybe I should talk to her first,” Jonny whispers when they get close. He’s starting to feel a heavy sense of guilt. He knows that what Chel feels for him can’t be anything like what Patrick does—like what he feels for Patrick—but he still misled her. He took her away from her home, for heaven’s sake.

“Yeah.” Patrick nods heavily.

Jonny goes forward without him. He’d rather have Patrick here, making him feel slightly less exposed and inadequate, but that would be cruel. He’s spent too long thinking about his own needs instead of Chel’s.

Chel’s making a cooking fire when he gets to their campsite. He’s suddenly impressed with her: she left her entire world today, everything she knows, and now she’s building a fire like it’s no big deal. He wishes he hadn’t ruined things with her so thoroughly, because maybe, now that he doesn’t have to be jealous of her or make out with her, she would be someone he might like to know.

He stops at the edge of the little clearing and stands there, arms hanging awkwardly at his sides. He needs to break the news—say anything, really—but she turns around before he can.

She catches sight of him, gives him a once over, and breaks into a grin. “Finally work things out with Patrick, did you?”

It takes a second for her words to make sense. Jonny’s mouth drops open. “What—but—you _knew?”_

She snorts. “Please. Like I wouldn’t know? You were so obvious.”

Jonny feels heat rising to his cheeks. “But, um. Then why would you—”

She waves a hand at him. “Have you seen you? I wasn’t going to not try.”

Oh, God. This is one of the most awkward conversations he’s ever had, and that’s a high bar these days. “I shouldn’t have let you think,” he says. “Well. I just wanted to say—sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.” She gives him a real smile. “We had some fun, didn’t we?” The wicked gleam returns to her eyes. “Though maybe not as much fun as you had with Patrick, judging by the looks of it.”

Altivo whickers, like he agrees. Jonny groans and drops his face into his hands. He never wants to have this conversation again.

“He’s around here, isn’t he?” Chel says. “Patrick! You can come out now!”

Jonny hears Patrick come up behind him. “Did you tell her?” Patrick asks in a low voice.

“Didn’t need to,” Jonny says, and Chel beams.

“About time the two of you worked things out,” she says.

“Wait, but.” Patrick flails a little. “You’re okay with this?” he asks her. “I mean—you left your city for—” He cuts off, turning a little red himself.

“Excuse me.” She puts her hands on her hips. “I left the city for me. I was the one who wanted out, remember?” She considers for a moment. ”But maybe I’ll keep the two of you around. If you promise me enough adventure.”

Jonny catches Patrick’s eye and smiles. That much, he thinks they can guarantee her.

***

That night, Jonny goes to sleep with his arms wrapped around Patrick, and this time he’s sure he’ll never have to let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler-y warnings:
> 
> Because this does follow the plot of the movie somewhat closely, there is (confused, angsty) infidelity. There’s also extensive internalized homophobia, mostly of the sort where Jonny doesn’t get that gay love is real love, because I spent much of the movie saying, “They’re such idiots they’ve obviously been together forever SOMEONE TELL THEM WHAT GAY IS.” (Ahem.) There’s thoughtlessness towards a woman who doesn’t deserve it. Also, there’s underage sexual activity, of the sort in which both parties are underage and no one’s coerced into anything. Oh, and there are kids living on the street but doing pretty (unrealistically?) okay.


End file.
